Tuesday, 1 July 2014

...well, today i got sent a new toy. I got home to find a parcel from Amazon waiting for me. Now my partner had said to keep an eye on the post as he had bought me something to say well done for finishing Uni. I opened it up and it was this...

Words cannot express how excited i am by this and i shall tell you why (other than my partner being totally awesome of course....).

There is a gaming tradition in my family having started out in 1979 when my dad brought home one of these...

We lived in a tiny village in Yorkshire at the time and frankly it was the most exciting things i had ever seen. Yes the games in hindsight were very basic and im sure that kids of today wouldnt understand the thrill of something which had no monitor, had to be hooked into the tv and was realllllly sloooow, but it was a revolution! i still remember fondly some of those games - Missile Command, Donkey Kong, Galaxian, Joust...oh they were superb. A few years later we got an Atari 800...

followed by an Atari ST...

My favourite games on these were adventure type games. As a family we would all sit down and try to work our way through the Scott Adams adventure games - text based adventures where you had to type in the exact word to get the game to go further - no images, just text. Again I'm not sure how the kids of today would cope with n graphics but they sure made your imagination work overtime! Some other family favourites were Ali Baba and Return of Heracles both basic graphic adventure games which we would sit down and play as a family - we still have family 'in jokes' from those days. I think that these adventure games fuelled my love of games like Zelda and Tomb Raider that i love today.

I had a few years without a console (getting married, having no money, getting divorced, life basically...) until my sister gave me an old Playstation - i didn't really get into the PlayStation at first other than Abe's Oddysee which appealed to my sense of humour. Then, after i made the move to Birmingham in 2000 and got a stupidly well-paid job in 2001, i bought a PlayStation 2*, ostensibly to play Prince of Persia. Then a good friend introduced me to Zelda Windwaker on the GameCube and i fell madly in love with the beautiful game with its adventure, puzzles and kooky creatures.

The Zelda games are EXACTLY the kind of games i like obviously harking back to those 80s adventure games. i have played Windwaker countless times - although games may seem an expensive outlay when you get a good one and spend hours and hours on it then they certainly become worth the money. My issue is that many games these days rely on graphics and not story content plus many of the big games are shoot 'em up types which i really don't like. Following Windwaker my other favourite games on the GameCube were Pikmin 1 & 2 which were puzzle solving games.

Over the years that passed i got an X Box 360 and have enjoyed the Assassins Creed series, the new Tomb Raider reboot is superb and Overlord (a more evil version of Pikmin still keeps me entertained) but i never lost my love for the Gamecube. I bought a Nintendo Wii and was so bitterly disappointed - i couldn't get on with the stupid sensor bar and playing Zelda Skyward Sword became a nightmare due to the appallingly bad control system. I sold my Wii quite recently and its a standing joke in our house that when anyone mentions the Wii my standard response is "i fucking HATE the Wii!"

So then Nintendo brought out the WiiU. I was sceptical - i hated the way they had gone down, what i call, the party game console. Im biased as i will forever love that little GameCube...look at it...its cuteness hides a superb games machine...

The problem is that trying to play GameCube games on a large screen tv is hampered somewhat by the picture looking terrible (something to do with resolution and g33ky sh1t that i don't understand...) so when i heard that they were bringing out Windwaker on the WiiU in HD as well as a long awaited sequel to the Pikmin franchise...well i really wanted one. being a poor student i hunted down secondhand WiiU's in CEX and the like but they are just SCARCE. Talking to people who work in CEX and Game, as well as friends who have a WiiU, its because people really like it. So i had to dream of owning one when i had saved up a bit of money.

but NO! here i am with a WiiU sitting in my living room! What are you doing sitting on your PC and writing this rather than playing Pikmin in a frenzy Emma? Well, I've had a little look but my partner had a friend over tonight and they were busy playing Mario Kart - i don't mind Mario Kart but am not a big fan of racing games. Now that Andy's friend has left i daren't go and start playing Pikmin as i will honestly spend hours on it and i have work tomorrow - i don't normally work Wednesday's and if i had known that a WiiU would be sitting in my living room i certainly wouldn't have agreed to go in for a meeting in Coventry in the morning...!!

So my plan for tomorrow afternoon is to get home as soon as possible and then lay claim to the console. Happy days :)

And for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about in relation to Windwaker or Pikmin 3 then have a gander at these trailers - and give me a shout if you are a fan or have any other games of this type that you think i may like!

About Me

Recently gave up financial security for a life of studying, crafts and cooking. And other things too, obviously.
I cant do fancy cooking. I cant do fancy craftwork. I just do what i can with the main aim being to enjoy myself and learn what mistakes to avoid next time....